Recruiting

The National Letter of Intent and “National Signing Day” gets a lot of press and fanfare. I bring this up because today, Wednesday, November 14th, is the initial signing date for prospective student-athletes signing during 2018-2019 and enrolling in college 2019-2020. But if you pay attention to ESPN, sports networks and other channels, then you would know most of the fanfare surrounding National Signing Day and the initial signing period is mainly focused on football and basketball commitments. What does it all mean though for wrestlers who intend to go on and compete in college?

You’re Making a Commitment

The basic gist of the NLI (National Letter of Intent) is that you are making a commitment to attend and compete for the institution of your choice for at least one year. When you sign the NLI, its a binding agreement between you and the school. And it comes with some stipulations to know:

A prospective student-athlete agrees to attend the institution full-time for one academic year (two semesters or three quarters).

The institution agrees to provide athletics financial aid for one academic year (two semesters or three quarters).

And one more thing, if you don’t comply with these provisions, then you will have to sit out for one year while you attend your next college or university as a full-time student for two semesters (or three quarters). What about the other side of the commitment? Your future college wrestling program can either renew or not renew your scholarship after one year, but whatever they choose, they must inform you of the decision. Past the first year there are pretty much no guarantees.

What else do Wrestlers need to know?

For starters, the NLI only pertains to student-athletes who are attending NCAA Division I and II athletic institutions and programs. You also can’t sign a National Letter of Intent if you are not being offered an athletic scholarship in any amount from the institution. Another thing to know is that you will also need to sign your financial aid award package as well but they are not the same or tied together. One is your need-based aid and the other is your athletic scholarship offer.

Some Tips for Wrestlers and Parents

Take your time when committing early! There is no reason to commit without doing your due diligence; visits, coach communication, school research, pricing, etc… You should take at least one official and unofficial visit before making a commitment anywhere.

Take your visits! Don’t turn down opportunities to visit somewhere because you can only see yourself at one place. In the end, everyone lands at one place – take your visits because its worth it on so many levels; perspective, networking, something to compare to, maybe even a landing spot if you are in a transfer situation. There is never enough perspective to be had and you never know what type of relationships you develop or knowledge you pick up from a visit. There are plenty of stories around where someone took a last-second visit late and changed their decision.

Plan on taking college admissions tests (ACT/SAT) multiple times! Make sure you go all in on doing your best. Many people strategically like to go all in on one test but we recommend you practice both and take both. If your scores are comparable, then they are comparable, and if you have to test a second time, then at that point it’s a choice or preference. More often than not, we see wrestlers do better on one test over the other.

Be Careful! A lot has changed recently with rules and dates. It’s in the coaches interest to offer early and use the rules to his advantage. Getting a recruiting class done early and out of the way is the goal for many coaches. Remember, most coaches are working with limited budgets and a small amount of scholarship money…don’t be afraid to ask questions or for clarification…know what you are signing up for. Don’t waste your own time and money and don’t waste other people’s time and money.

Think about working with one of our College Wrestling Recruit Coaches or a College Admissions Consultant. The College Admissions process alone is a lot to handle. Throw in looking at colleges that offer a varsity sponsored wrestling program and the limited amount of athletic scholarships available in wrestling and it’s even tougher. Our recruit coaches understand the stress and angst you might be dealing with. We work to help you and your family arrive at the best academic, athletic and financial fit possible. For more info on how we can help you with your goals, email us at: info@wrestlingrecruiting.com

National Letter of Intent - FAQ's

Questions People Frequently Ask Us

If you know in advance that you will not be staying with your initial institution and will be looking to find a knew home, you will have to ask for a 4-4 transfer. You should only really explore this option if you are breaking your commitment and have an offer from the school you intend to transfer to.

The NLI only pertains to NCAA DI and DII because of athletic scholarship offerings. Because NCAA DIII does not offer money for athletics, there is no signing period. However, if you would like to announce your commitment and have a ceremony at your High School you can do so with a document that is known as a “Celebratory Signing Form” and is to be signed after the prospect has been accepted to the institution. You can obtain the form from your future coach.

Are you NCAA or NAIA eligible? If not, and you plan to wrestle NCAA DI or DII you will have to be registered and eligible to compete at the next level. Want to learn more about wrestling recruiting and college admissions?

As you move through the school year use our high school timeline as a way to make sure you are on track to meet NCAA eligibility requirements. pic.twitter.com/Lqtcjp0rRv

"For people who don’t play or like sports, sports metaphors are frustrating, obnoxious or cliche. Of course, they think this at their loss. Even the ancient philosophers from Seneca to Epictetus to Socrates loved to reference sports. Wrestling, gymnastics, boxing, running—you can’t crack an ancient text and not find them connecting philosophy to metaphors about sparring, about competing in the Olympics, and training and winning and losing. They do this because sports then, as now, were a part of life. Also because they embody the best and the worst of life—our competitive urges, teamwork, grace under pressure, realizing our potential, the agony of defeat. It’s why I love books written by great coaches—they have so much to teach us, not only about the game but about life itself."

Ryan Holiday

You might love wrestling. You might be thinking about trying it out at the next level, and when you do, questions flood your mind. “How hard is college wrestling? Am I good enough? How hard is it to get a wrestling scholarship? What weight should I wrestle in college? ….Are you sure? What if I really, really, really like pizza? Okay, so I wanna wrestle in college. I love wrestling, but what’s in it for me? Do I get something out of this when I’m done?”

Those are all valid questions, especially the one about pizza. After all, pizza is life. Maybe it’s not all about wrestling and cutting weight. How much scholarship money will I be getting to make this worth it? What if I want to do another sport like football or power lifting? Can I focus on my classes while wrestling at the same time? (Spoiler: Yes, and I’ll give you a few examples later in this post.)

Should I Wrestle In College?

Truthfully, it depends.

It depends on what kind of college life you’re looking for. How much do you love wrestling? More importantly, how much will you love wrestling in times of adversity? Based on this, you may need to make wrestling your life while everything else takes a back seat for several years, you may join a club that occasionally competes in tournaments, or do something in between. In other cases, you may feel burnt out and severely injured from high school wrestling that the thought of stepping on another wrestling mat makes you sweat bullets, and that’s a fair point too. Based on how much you’d like to commit, you have several different options to choose from.

If you hate wrestling, you probably won’t wrestle to your potential. However, if you find that you don’t want to wrestle because you want to “take it easy” in college, here’s a word of warning for you: you may end up feeling unfulfilled and lacking in purpose. In Man’s Search For Meaning, Victor Frankl nails this feeling on the head when he says, “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” Lacking a source of meaning in your life can lead to depression and questionable life decisions. From one self respecting human being to another, I suggest you find something else to do that’ll satisfy you even if that thing is not wrestling. Just because you don’t wrestle NCAA Division I doesn’t make you a person. It also doesn’t necessarily make you a bad wrestler. As a former DIII wrestler myself, I’ve beaten DI wrestlers before. That brings us to the next consideration.

Am I Good Enough To Wrestle In College?

I once talked to a prospective recruit who decided to visit campus during an open house over the summer. The coach wasn’t there, so he quietly asked me, “Do you think I’m good enough to wrestle in college?” Four years after that, I saw that he had won the Conference Championship. This obviously takes a lot of work, but the point is that you probably need to jump the mental hurdle. It’s very possible for a freshman to join the program and win matches right away.

I’ve also seen way too many forfeits in college wrestling dual meets to tell you that you’re not good enough to wrestle in college. A college coach will take a wrestler over an empty weight class any day. Of course, there’s more to college wrestling than filling empty weight classes, so let’s go through some of the other stuff that comes along with the question of being good enough.

Being a wrestler also helps you get into college, especially if the coach wants you there. Long story short, you may not get a full wrestling scholarship, but you’ll have plenty of other options to consider.

In light of transparency, after my coach did some negotiation on my behalf, I received a total of $45,800 in financial aid ($40,000 college grant, $4,000 in merit, and $1,800 for work study on campus) for my first year back when tuition cost $52,000. Basically, this took my tuition costs down from $52,000 to $6,200, and my tuition cost ended up being around $6,200 per year for the remainder of my time at my college with a few decreases over the years. Even though I seriously considered it at the start, I never had to take out a student loan so I graduated debt-free, too. Pretty sweet, right? I’m very grateful.

Can I Join A Wrestling Team Without Being Recruited?

In most cases, you can absolutely walk onto a team. Just ask the wrestling coach. My high school mentor and wrestling coach walked onto the Harvard wrestling team. Three years later, he was voted the team captain. Remember 2011 NCAA Champion Anthony Robles? He also walked onto Arizona State. However, reaching this level and staying at this level is a huge time commitment, which we’ll talk about next.

Is It Worth The Time Commitment?

For this section, we’re gonna approach this as a cost-benefit analysis. If the benefit exceeds the cost, then it’s worth it. If the cost exceeds the benefit, then you’re better off saying no. Your economics professor can thank me later.

Which College Lifestyle Is For You?

College wrestling certainly isn’t for everyone. At times, you’ll miss out on having what most would consider a regular college social life and you’ll end up drinking less too. Naturally, you’ll also have less time to spend on academics and professional opportunities compared to a non-athlete, so you’ll need to be very smart with your time. Depending on what level of commitment you want while wrestling in college, you’ll also have options from multiple different divisions to consider in order to find the right fit for you.

What Kind Of Person Wrestles In College And Does Well?

It seems difficult, but it’s certainly possible. Check out these three examples of highly successful NCAA wrestlers who balanced wrestling and academics extremely well.

Click on each image or name to learn more about each of these great role models. Plenty of student athletes also make it work on the DIII level, but as you can imagine, competing in college wrestling doesn’t come at a small cost in terms of your time. This is where you figure out whether the benefits are worth it.

What are the benefits?

Are the sacrifices worth it, then? Before you make your decision, you also need to consider all the benefits that come along with wrestling. It’s no secret that wrestling in college comes with sacrifices (in fact, some people will glorify the sacrifices because it makes them seem tough). Aside from getting the opportunity to do something you love for four more years while building some of the closest relationships in your life, college wrestling comes with a few other perks.

Mental and Physical Conditioning

Sports psychologists now say that nothing works in isolation. Mind and body are not separate. If you want to focus on school, make sure that it’s not a time management issue. Exercise will only keep your brain functioning at an optimal state. In fact, athletes find that they do better in school during the competitive season because they tend to find themselves in a focused state.

Obviously, college wrestling will put you in the best shape of your life. You’ll look like you’re carved out of granite. Believe me, college is a great time to look jacked along with some of your closest friends (unless your best friend wrestles heavyweight and is not named Kyle Snyder. In that case, I apologize).

Professional Opportunities

According to Forbes magazine, wrestlers make the best employees. Personally, I secured a job in New York City that paid $58,000 for the first year before I was even a senior in college. That had a lot to do with the connections I made in wrestling and framing my interview stories around my leadership opportunities in wrestling. Not to be outdone, other DIII athletes from other sports at my college had similar opportunities lined up for them.

Discipline, work ethic, and the ability to handle adversity or uncertainty are not as common outside of the wrestling community. You’ll notice this right away in the working world. When things get difficult later in your professional career and people are panicking, you’ll be walking around with a confident smile while thinking to yourself, “I can do this. It’s not nearly as hard as wrestling.” That’s a powerful quality to have that no one can ever take away from you.

So...Should I Wrestle In College?

Figure out what kind of college life you’re looking to have. Then, do the cost-benefit analysis for yourself to see if wrestling in college is worth it for you. If the benefits of college wrestling outweigh the sacrifices you’ll make, then the answer is yes.

Personally, it was one of the best decisions that I (Che Chengsupanimit, Co-Founder of CWR) ever made in my education and in my life. I learned a lot through my pursuit of excellence in sport. It made me better at business, at handling stressful situations, at tackling tough problems, and at finding motivation.

Committing to wrestling comes with a promise to improve yourself. While I can't promise you the world at your fingertips at the end of your wrestling career, I can certainly promise that you will have most of the tools you need to get there.

Tell Me More!

Interested in learning more? As a sign up bonus for wrestlers, you will receive our free tips that covers how to wrestle in college, including how to get scholarships and how to get recruited to compete at the next level. This is currently only available to wrestlers.

Welcome to lesson one in our College Application For Wrestlers Mini Course! When you get ready for a tournament, what do you do? Maybe some of the following: Figure out what time you’re waking up Making sure you have your warm ups, headgear, shoes, and singlet Check your weight as soon as possible (unless you’re […]

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Six minutes on the clock. As I stepped on the line to shake my opponent’s hand, something felt off. Something had felt off the entire time at this tournament and I wasn’t sure why. Thoughts clouded my mind like storm clouds in a hurricane. For whatever reason, I couldn’t shake this feeling, but as wrestlers know, the tournament doesn’t wait for you. When you get called to the wrestling mat, you have no choice but to step on the mat whether you’re ready or not. Unsurprisingly, I choked. Within moments, I went 0-2 and my high school career was over.

This was my first and only year in which I qualified for prep nationals. My coach told me that I was one win away from tying my school record for the number of wins in one season. My first match was tough, but supposedly very winnable. Nothing felt right. I was second guessing myself. My coach had given me a game plan. Looking back, I had problems executing game plans because I had a terrible habit of overthinking, which threw me off my own game. As a result, I’d wrestle to only a fraction of my potential. Part of this had to do with the fact that my style was still developing. After all, I started wrestling when I was 14 years old.

I did what I could to warm up and get ready for my upcoming match. However, my mind took over and I failed to get into the zone. My mind was already going 100 miles per hour in the wrong direction. Being unable to focus, I was unable to execute. While I stormed off the mat after my second loss, my coach told me that I had a great season. At the time, it definitely didn’t feel that way. Those losses stung. There were people I had beaten at New England Preps that progressed farther than me in that tournament. One of my opponents that I had beaten at New England Preps made it to the blood round. At the time, I would have given anything to do that tournament over again. However, I learned my lesson. The wrestling season was over for now. Fortunately, my wrestling career wouldn’t end on that type of performance. All I could do was to keep on progressing while being grateful that I was recruited with a scholarship so I still had four more years of wrestling in college.